They were ready to testify that.
The ship sailed back to Spain.
The tales that they carried back to beautiful Seville caused a great disappointment in Spain. They must have stricken the heart of the wife of Magellan.
Gormez related there that the Admiral had become mad; that he had marooned the two priests whom they had brought back as witnesses of the truth of what he asserted; that Magellan had sailed into winter seas, and quite lost his reason, and knew not where he was going.
Then he told a terrible story of the execution of the mutinous Spaniards, friends of the King, at St. Julian. He said:
"His cousin, Mesquita, our captain, advised these crimes, and so we put him in irons, and have brought him back to receive justice in Spain."
Mesquita protested his innocence and tried to gain credence for his case. But no one cared to listen to him. The court and the popular feeling were against him. He was consigned to a prison. It was useless for him to protest, and to say that Magellan had made a great discovery; that he had found straits which were leading to the South Sea, and which were likely to prove that the ocean that Balboa had beheld was continuous.
He was placed in a lonely dungeon, and there brooded over his wrongs and dreamed.
He had one hope; it was that Magellan would return triumphant, a second Columbus or Vasco da Gama. If that day were to come, he would be released, and the court would honor him, and he would be hailed as a hero.
"I have been made a prisoner by treachery," he said to a few men. "I believe that the day of my vindication will one day dawn."